


Lay Your Weapons Down

by waterandsilver



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Champion Shiro (Voltron), Enemies to Lovers, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gladiator Shiro (Voltron), Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Slavery, Slow Build, Trauma, Violence, You know what I mean, gladiator Keith, tale as old as time burn as slow as fuck, well half galra
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2019-07-04 18:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15846615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterandsilver/pseuds/waterandsilver
Summary: Following in the footsteps of the mother who raised him, Keith joins the Blade of Marmora as soon as he comes of age. But on his first mission, he is captured by the Galra, who decide to put his fighting spirit to use.Months after being taken from Kerberos, just as he is starting to earn the title 'Champion', Shiro is shocked to find himself facing down a boy who looks like he is human in the gladiator pits.





	1. The Prisoners

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't get this idea out of my head, so I wrote it. This is mostly a setting up chapter; I'm going to try and post the next one soon. Please leave a comment if you like!!
> 
> Title is from 'Mars' by Sleeping at Last (the most Voltrony song I've ever heard)

Shiro no longer flinches at the clang of the door as the sentries slide open the lock. He no longer struggles when their hands close around his arms. They do not have to drag him anymore, only flank him at either side as they march him down the passageways, their guns lying slack.

Shiro doesn’t know how long it’s been since he came aboard this ship, but he’s learned, by now, that struggling is useless. No matter how much he tries to resist, it always ends the same way.

It always ends with the fight.

 

Three, four months is his best guess at the time that has elapsed since the nightmare began. Time blurred in the days after Kerberos. They kept him unconscious, or semi-conscious, while they figured out what he was, and what to do with him. He has hazy memories, memories that make something inside of him want to scream when he lingers on them for too long. His clothes gone. Harsh, barking voices above him, saying things he can’t understand, but that he knows are terrible. Sudden warmth; sudden cold. A surface underneath him and rough hands turning him over, like a piece of meat.

And he didn’t just lose time. He lost everything he thought he knew about the universe.

By the time he woke up, he belonged to a different world altogether. Well, he belonged to a ship, more precisely. The vessel he is aboard is a Galra cruiser. Galra: the species whose leader he met when he was first taken – who Shiro naively tried to tell that humans would be _peaceful_ towards. He knows now that that was laughable. The Galra could crush all of humanity under their heel, if they wanted to.

He was conscious enough to hear their final decision.

“He is young and relatively strong, from our calculations. He may actually be large, for his species. There was an issue with muscle weakness but that can be quickly fixed…”

“And what do you suggest we do with him?”

“Hmm… If they’re still looking for new blood, he could make a decent fighter in the pits.”

_A fighter in the pits._

Shiro was trained in three different forms of martial arts. Shiro graduated top of his class: the best pilot in the Galaxy Garrison. And Shiro had never thrown a punch that wasn’t in training.

“Now that’s an idea… I’ll pass it on to the Commander.”

And just like that, his fate was sealed.

 

 

The creature they are making him fight, this time, has skin that looks like it’s covered in golden-green scales, rippling and reflecting the lights of the purple torches that illuminate the ring. Whatever species it is, it’s taller than Shiro. Once upon a time, Shiro would have been awestruck by the sight of it. He would have wanted to study every scale.

Now, he simply clenches his fist and takes up a defensive position.

He can’t quite work out where the creature’s eyes are. In the pits, you can see a lot in the eyes of your opponent.

The emotion he sees most often is fear. Fear, fear, because they are all slaves here. _Gladiators_ , they call them, but no, they are slaves of the most basic kind. The Galra pluck a few of the strongest-looking specimens from each planet they conquer, and ship them to this cruiser. Even the ones who were soldiers before they were sent here, that is not what they are now. They’re all here to be put on display. To be shown off; to entertain. And the entertainment is their death. Even the ones who roar and snarl and fight with all they’re worth are terrified, deep down.

Sometimes there is confusion, as well as fear. No doubt wondering how they ended up here. Shiro was one of those, in his first fight. He had been groggy and disoriented after days - maybe weeks - of being kept in the dark and cold, starved of light and touch and food and almost everything a human needs to survive. And then suddenly he was in some kind of arena, and there were lights all around him. And there was the _noise_. Shiro will never forget it. Thousands upon thousands of Galra baying for blood. Shiro was so startled that he barely noticed his opponent until she came at him with a three-foot-long mace.

He doesn’t know how he survived that match. He lost, but he still survived. And so he was sent back to his cell with a dozen bandaged wounds, and then, when he was healed enough to stand and hold a weapon, he was dragged out once again.

The next match was the one that he fought in Matt’s place, and he lost that one as well. He lost more than just the fight, that time. When the creature took his arm, tearing it clean from the socket with its teeth, Shiro thought he was going to die. He had never imagined that pain could exist on that scale. He kept waiting for it to all fade to black – surely he couldn’t survive, surely not with that much blood, that much pain – but then he was on an operating table (conscious; the Galra do not waste anaesthesia on slaves) and he could feel every second of it as they welded the prosthetic into place.

When he found himself in the pit for a third time, survival instinct finally took hold. The memory of losing his arm was enough to motivate him to not hold back: to use his new weapon properly. His new arm: heavy and silver and deadly. That time, finally, the match had ended with Shiro standing while his opponent was the one on the ground.

Sometimes there are other emotions in the eyes of his opponents.

Rage. Hatred. Determination.

Or hopelessness. Defeat. Surrender.

Shiro has won seven fights since his first. He knows it’s a good record. He knows that they have started calling him, in the cells, in the corridors, in the betting rings, the _Champion_.

He wonders what his opponents see when they look into his eyes.

This fight goes relatively quickly. There is no light sparring in the pit. From the first lunge, every blow is aimed to incapacitate, if not to kill. His opponent gets in a few hits, dragging him to the ground at one point. Shiro glances up to see something that looks awfully like a poisonous stinger emerging from between its claws, coming straight towards him, and he bucks away from it, just about managing to wrench out of its grip in time. The stinger smashes into the ground, making the creature howl, and Shiro takes advantage of the moment of weakness to attack.

Eventually, he manages to wrestle it into submission, grunting with the exertion of having to use all his limbs to hold the creature down. It’s hot in the arena, hot and humid, and Shiro always feels as if the noise of the crowd itself is pressing in around him. He manages to shove his elbow down over where he thinks the creature’s airway should be, and holds it there as it thrashes underneath him, until finally it twitches one last time, and falls still. Shiro lets go immediately.

He stumbles back to his feet, nauseous to the bone, and a roar goes up in the stadium. The spectators, the Galra, his captors, cheering for him as if he is one of their own.

 

 

The injuries he's sustained this time are only minor. Only a deep gash on the inside of his arm, and some bruising. Nothing, nothing at all, compared to what he's had before.

He hopes the other creature is only unconscious. His stomach churns as he remembers the way the thing shuddered before it fell slack, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the memory, as a Galra medic applies salve to his wound.

(He has won eight fights now. By Galra standards, that makes him courageous. And yet he is never brave enough to ask the medics whether his opponents survive.)

 

 

There aren’t days and nights in space, so Shiro measures time by meals. He figures they give him two a day; he’s generally pretty hungry most the time, but he’s not on the brink of starvation, and there are certain guards who are more likely to bring the first meal and others who are more likely to bring the second. The foods have strange tastes and even stranger textures, but Shiro doesn’t really pay much attention to the food. It’s just fuel, at this point.

In the early days, when he was first made a fighter, he used to be in a bigger cell, a group cell, with Matt and some others. But then Matt was sent away, and Shiro started winning, and they moved him out of that cell and into this one. There are actual bunks in here, even if they are almost as hard and cold as the metal floor itself. Two bunks, one on either side of the cell. He used to have a cellmate. A big, round, strong creature with purple skin and more eyes than Shiro could count. But after one fight, he never came back.

Since then, Shiro has been alone. Always alone. Except for when he is sent into the pit.

Thirteen meals later, the lock of the door is slid open again.

 

 

They put him in fighter clothes before the send him out into the ring. Ripped garments, shapeless and shameless, designed to expose skin and offer absolutely no protection. Shiro doesn’t know what happened to his Garrison uniform, that he had worn so proudly, so long ago.

It is starting to become routine, stepping out into the lights and hearing the cheer as the crowd catches sight of him. They begin chanting it almost immediately this time.  _Champion. Champion._

Shiro is the first in the arena today. As they all wait for his opponent to arrive, the audience is being kept entertained by a booming voice.

“… think some of you will be _quite_ excited by today’s opponent. A new gladiator! Freshly shipped in from the planet Arkaros. His species is unknown, but not necessarily unfamiliar. When he arrives in the arena, you’ll understand what I mean…”

Shiro usually ignores the commentary; it's irritating at best and dangerously distracting at worst. But today, something in the words catches his attention. A new gladiator? That's odd. The newer arrivals are usually pitted against each other, not the seasoned fighters. It gives them more of a chance. There’s not much entertainment in watching some poor weak thing, half-dead from the transport ship, being pummelled to death in five minutes. (Shiro doesn't think there's much entertainment in watching helpless prisoners fight to the death at  _all_ , but the Galra have never asked his opinion.)

“He should be here any minute now…”

The commentator is stalling. Shiro begins to wonder what is taking so long – whether this new kid is putting up a fight – when suddenly, someone is quite literally thrown into the ring on the other side. Shiro springs back, putting a safe amount of distance between them. Despite the force with which he was thrown into the arena, his opponent is quick to get back up. He's smaller than Shiro, which is a surprise (Shiro has learned the hard way that even though he's tall back on Earth, that isn't the case out here). Maybe it's his size that helps him scramble to his feet so quickly, moving faster than Shiro would have expected, lifting his face to the other side of the ring-

And Shiro’s jaw goes slack. The last thing he expected to see is standing in front of him. Instinct makes him lower his arm.

The boy they have sent to fight him looks half-wild. When his eyes find Shiro, his lips draw back over his teeth in a feral snarl. There’s blood on his face already, dripping down his chin, and his hair is a dark, tangled mess, almost drowning out his pale face. But Shiro has no problem finding his opponent’s eyes this time. They glare at Shiro so strongly it’s as if the boy is already trying to slice him apart with his gaze alone. They are dark violet, a colour that Shiro has never seen before in a face like that.

And yet there can be no doubt about what he is. Shiro can do nothing but stare.

The boy is, unmistakeably, human.

 

 

They come out of nowhere.

Keith has been stationed here for four quintents now. The Blade of Marmora had intel that the Galra were interested in this planet, that they were sending scouts to assess its weak points, before they launched an attack. Keith’s briefing is simple: he’s here to find the scouts, and when he finds them, to kill them.

The Blade’s intel turned out to be wrong.

The Galra aren’t scouting out the planet. They’re conquering it.

Keith is making his way through one of the market towns when it happens. A shadow falls across everything, as if night has come in the middle of the day. He, along with everyone else, looks up, and his heart almost stops to see the hulking monster of a Galra ship materialised above the planet. He only has a split second to process it - this is really happening: he’s caught in the middle of a Galra attack, alone and barely armed - before the explosions begin.

The ground shakes with the force of the first blasts alone. Left and right, people are thrown off their feet. Keith barely has time to react, running purely on instinct, darting out of the way of the blasts as the Galra rain fire down onto the unsuspecting, peaceful planet. He hears a distant cry to his left. Glancing up, he sees a child standing beside a pile of smoking debris. The people of this planet are blue-skinned and small, compared to the Galra company he is used to keeping. The child looks tiny beside the wreckage. Keith pushes himself to his feet, but as soon as he does so, the ground shakes again, twice as violently before, and then suddenly there’s no ground anymore. He feels the heat of the explosion, feels it scorching the side of his face, as he tumbles helplessly through the air. He comes down hard, scraping the skin of his shoulder; he's undercover, and he doesn't have the protection of his Blade suit.

When Keith finally manages to look up again, he knows that only ticks can have passed, but the town is already unrecognisable. There are no streets, no stalls, only wreckage. He can’t see the child anymore.

“Keith?” comes a tinny voice in his ear, sounding so far away. At least his communicator is still working. “Keith, we’re detecting Galra ships descending onto Arkaros."

 _No shit_ , Keith thinks, grabbing a piece of nearby debris that might have once been part of a metal structure, and holding it over his head against the gunfire.

"Where are you? What’s your status?”

“I’m in the middle of the attack. I’ll try and make it back to my ship, but…”

He trails off. If he could make it back to his ship, he could do something. Maybe he could take out some of the canons. But Keith is a realist. He’s aware of how fucked he is. His ship was hidden, cloaked, in one of the nearby streets. He doesn’t know how he’d even try to look for it, if by some miracle it's still in one piece. Not under this heavy fire.

“Your orders are to evacuate the planet immediately,” says the Blade in his ear, whose name Keith can’t remember.

“Understood. I’ll do what I can.”

But doing what he can, right now, is just sheltering under his makeshift shield, trying to make himself as small as a target as possible, while the blasts rain down. With every passing minute, he expects a blast to hit his arms or legs, expects the white-hot jolt of pain. As time passes, the blasts drown out all other sound; screams and shouts die away. Eventually, when it feels as if he has been hiding for hours, the gunfire ceases, and a sudden, awful silence settles upon the planet.

Then, a deep Galra voice, ringing out through the ruins.

“Citizens! Your planet is being brought into the fold of the Great Galra Empire. Surrender peacefully, and your life will be spared.”

Keith lowers his shield and looks up. A walkway has descended from the cruiser overhead, about twenty feet away. Armed sentries are filing down from the ship, and he sees the first survivors being rounded up. Keith’s eyes travel further, and land on the figures nearest to the walkway.

Those aren’t sentries. Those are Galra. The Blade of Marmora trains its recruits rigorously on how to recognise a Galra’s rank from their uniform. They are commanding officers, overseeing the attack.

“Surrender peacefully,” one of the officers is repeating, “And your life will be spared.”

Keith’s eyes narrow.

Surrendering peacefully is not exactly in his nature.

He wasn’t able to stop the attack, and now, there is no way he can escape. But he can take as many of these vile bastards down with him as possible. For a moment, his mother’s face flashes across his mind; the look on her face when she realises what has happened to him, on his very first mission. But then he pushes it out of his head. There’s no time for that now. He needs to act.

Before anything, though, he reaches down to the strap on his side and pulls out his faithful knife. Pausing, he grips it one last time, then places it on the ground, and covers it over with a layer of dirt and finally with the metal place. If they figure out he’s a Blade, they'll want him alive. They'll want information. But since this was supposed to be an undercover mission, he left his suit with Kolivan, and now he has buried the last piece of evidence linking him to the Blade. One of the advantages of being only half-Galra, one of the reasons he was chosen for this mission, is that nobody would take one look at Keith and think he was a Marmora agent.

Without his knife, he doesn’t have a weapon. But he has the element of surprise, and Keith knows how to use that to his advantage. He manages to take one of them out before the others even realise he’s there, launching himself onto the Galra officer and driving his elbow into his face. The second one jumps back, surprise colouring her face, but Keith tackles her too with a yell, knocking her to the ground. He hears a noise of surprise from the other officers, and he reaches for her blaster, planning on emptying it into the group of them. But just as his fingers close around the handle, there's a sudden pain in his side.

It is so sharp and piercing that he forgets everything else, the sheer shock of it winding him. The pain is so all-consuming that he doesn’t even feel himself falling, or his back hitting the ground. The next thing he knows, he is aching all over, and he is lying on his back, staring up at the Galra cruiser overhead, a metallic mockery of sky.

“Where did _this_ one come from?”

Something prods at his aching side. Keith’s vision is blurred. He can see the blurry outlines of the Galra officers above him. Something catches his attention from the corner of his eye, and he tries to focus on it, blinking. Something long, and sparking at the end, in one of the Galra’s hands.

A tazer. They fucking _tazed_ him.

One of their spies said that the Galra were employing new infantry equipment, but Keith underestimated just how painful that would be. Of course, if it was built to bring down a full-sized Galra soldier, one of the _weaknesses_ of being only half-Galra is that Keith is smaller, and his skin is thinner. No wonder it hurt so much.

He tries to move, but he only manages to lift his head an inch before he thuds back to the ground with a gasp, another wave of pain crashing through him.

“He doesn’t look like a native,” one of the officers comments.

"You’re right…”

A head tilts.

“Fiesty little thing, isn’t he?”

A chuckle. An actual _chuckle_.

Keith is going to kill them. He’s going to rip that Galra’s tongue out of its mouth and drown it in its own blood. As soon as he figures out how to move again.

“Yeah, you can say that again. The little fucker knocked Racxa out cold – look at him!”

“Relax. He’ll be back on his feet in no time.”

“So will this one, if we’re not careful. What d’you think we should do with him? Kill him?”

The shapes above him shift. Keith can feel them looking down at him, deciding his fate, as dark spots grow alarmingly in his vision.

“No,” says the deep voice, sounding as far away now as the stars. “I think that fighting spirit can be put to some use…”

The Galra holding the tazer shifts, and Keith only has a split second to realise that they’re going to shock him again, before a yell is being torn from his throat. The pain arrives in a solid wave that picks Keith up and carries him with it, dragging him down into darkness.

 

 

Consciousness is reluctant to return to Keith. He comes around several times, groggily, only for long enough to get a brief glimpse of his surroundings, before passing out again.

At one point, he comes to and realises that he’s been put in a cell. He instinctively tries to unfold his limbs, but finds that he can’t. His legs hit metal bars.

No, not a cell.

A cage.

Keith can feel the cold, cramped press of the bars against his naked skin. They’ve taken his clothes. Vulnerability washes over him. He wants to know where they’re taking him. What they’re planning on doing with him. Keith tries to breath, tries to to swirl his rising panic. He _will_ get out of here. Taking him alive was a mistake. If he’s still breathing, then he’ll find a way to escape. He’ll find a way to escape, and then he’ll kill them all. He vows it, and then he loses consciousness again.

 

 

When he wakes for real, he knows he’s not on Arkaros anymore. Keith was raised in space; before he even fully wakes, he registers the familiar drop of pressure in his gut that tells him he’s aboard a ship. His first discovery, upon opening his eyes, is that he’s no longer in the cage. He's in a small, bare room. Relief washes over him, followed by a stronger wave of indignation. He shouldn’t have to be _grateful_ that he’s no longer caged like an animal.

The relief is short-lived anyway. Fresh anxiety begins to spread through him when he discovers that he can’t move any of his limbs. He manages to raise his head enough to look down, and see that he’s been strapped to some kind of table.

Which is just fucking _great_.

Keith knows the restraints won’t give. It was drilled into him in training: the Blade don’t let themselves get captured. If there’s one thing the Galra know how to handle, apart from war, it’s prisoners. Sure enough, there is no room for leeway in the hard metal restraints that bite at his wrists and ankles, none at all. Keith has to try anyway. He pulls against them as hard as he can, trying to squeeze his slim hand enough to slip it through the cuff at his wrist. But all it does is make him out of breath from exertion, and eventually, he has to give up, letting his head fall back onto the table.

Keith stares up at the grim grey-black hue of the Galra ship, just as ugly from the inside as the out. This wasn’t how he wanted his first mission to go. He spent years training… and for this? To be captured pretty much immediately?

His stomach is beginning to churn uncomfortably.

He wants to know what they’re going to do to him.

It feels like he is alone in there for a long time before something finally happens. Keith looks up sharply at the noise of the door sliding open. Two sentries file into the room, followed by two Galra. Keith gives them his hardest glare, but they don’t exactly seem intimidated, and he’s not surprised. It’s hard to seem threatening when you’re tied to a table.

He’s in a bad position and he knows it. He tries not to shrink too much when one of the Galra approaches the table, lays down a box beside his head and starting to rifle through it.

“This is the one they said needed extra guards?” she asks the other. “He seems… small.”

Keith scowls. “Is someone going to tell me where the fuck I am?”

“Ha. He’s got a mouth on him, too.”

Keith opens his mouth to show them just how _much_ of a mouth he has on him, but then his head is being pushed back against the table with a firm hand on his forehead. He yells, but that’s the wrong thing to do as well, as fingers pry into his mouth and hold it open. A light is being shone straight at his face, making him blink rapidly. He squirms, but he’s powerless as they hold him down. The Galra with the box must be some kind of medic. She inspects Keith systematically, prodding and poking, listening to his heart, running cold hands and colder instruments over his skin. He’s not naked anymore, but he’s in strange, shabby garments that make him feel exposed, that add to the growing feeling of dread in his stomach, for some reason.

What do they have planned for him, that they need to inspect him like this?

Fear trickles through him. What if his appearance isn't enough of a disguise? Maybe they know that he is a Blade. Maybe they’re going to interrogate him after all.

“Hmmm,” the medic eventually, when she finally pulls back and puts down her instruments. “He seems healthy enough. Although I don’t think he’ll last five dobashes against the Champion.”

A shiver unlike any other goes through Keith.  _The Champion_.

“Yeah, but you can see the resemblance, right?” The other Galra lets out a low whistle. “That’s one fight that the audience are gonna love. Still got no idea how he ended up on Arkaros if they _are_ related or something…”

Fight? They’re sending him to fight someone? And a _champion_?

“Hmm,” says the medic again. “They might be the same species but they sure as quiznack have different temperaments. The Champion never struggles half this much.”

The other voice says something, but Keith doesn’t hear it. All at once, realisation crashes over him, and his breath hitches. There can only be one place that they are talking about.

“No!” he says loudly, and starts struggling once again, bucking against the restraints, desperate to get out of here.

His distress is ignored.

“Do you think he’ll survive the fight?” one of the Galra asks conversationally.

“Are you kidding? Have you seen the size of this kid? The Champion is gonna take his head off his shoulders.”

Keith’s heart is pounding wildly in his chest. They’ve brought him to the gladiator pits. To fight to the death for the entertainment of the Galra. Keith was raised hearing his mother talk of them with disgust in her voice, shaking her head at one of the Galra’s most barbaric institutions. And now he’s about to be thrown into the ring.

“Alright, get him up. He’s ready.”

Keith almost chokes on the panic that wells up in his chest. He’s _not_ ready. But the restraints are being loosened now. Keith takes advantage as soon as he feels them slacken, lashing out as hard as he can. He feels his right foot collide with the leg of the Galra guard, making him stumble back.

But he doesn’t get the chance to escape. The sentries' robotic hands close around his arms with a vice-like grip that he knows he’s not strong enough to break out of. Not when he’s just spent quintents unconscious. Keith is weak. It hits him as soon as he’s upright, the wave of dizziness. By the time it passes, he’s fully restrained, and the brief hope of escape dies within him.

“Now I get why they wanted extra guards,” the Galra guard says grimly, glaring at Keith and beginning to propel him towards the door with a hard shove.

They make quick work of dragging him through the ship’s passageways, barely letting his feet touch the floor. Keith’s training is kicking in in the back of his head. The Blade aren’t supposed to let themselves get captured, but there are still protocols for if ever they do. Memorise the route they take you. But Keith doesn’t know what the point of that would be, when they’re surely taking him to his death anyway. His head is slowly filling up with images of the gladiator pits. Images from tales he heard as a child, tales of sick horror-fascination, that turned into pure horror when he reached adolescence. That are about to turn into a _reality_ … And it doesn’t help that it is getting _louder_ with every corner they turn. A faint chant that soon becomes almost deafening, seeming to fill the very air around him...

And then he’s blinking, almost blinded by the brightness of sudden lights. Keith squints. Where the sentries have brought him to a stop, a platform looms over his head. He looks up, and his knees almost weaken at the sight of the stands rising around him. He's never seen so many Galra in one place before. There must be hundreds of them - no, thousands.

Keith is so preoccupied staring that he misses what his guard is saying, until one of the sentries shakes him, forcing him to pay attention.

"Pick your weapon."

Keith's eyes follow his gesture, and he sees that they are beside a rack of clubs, swords, daggers, and maces, the handles faced towards him.

"Not that it will make much difference," the guard mutters.

Anger flashes through Keith. Instead of turning to the weapon rack, he spits as hard as he can in the guard’s face.

His punishment comes immediately: a hard backhand that would knock him to the floor, if the sentry behind him didn’t keep him upright, so the guard could hit him again. Keith can taste blood on his lips. But his jaw _hurts_ , and even though he wants to, he has the sense not to spit it back into the guard’s face. Getting beaten to a pulp _before_ the fight even begins wouldn’t be a great start. His stomach is sinking to ultimate depths as acceptance sinks in: he’s going to have to do this. There’s no way out of this. Even though he’s weak from travel and hasn’t eaten anything in fuck knows how long, and he doesn’t know how he will find the strength.

He's going to have to fight.

“Stupid little fucker,” the guard growls. “Let’s see how long you survive with this.”

Something metallic and cold is shoved into his hands. And then he’s being dragged forwards, marched up a short set of steps, and thrown unceremoniously onto the platform above. Keith’s shoulder, still sore from the attack on Arkaros, hits the floor of the ring hard. But he ignores the pain, rolling with the momentum of the blow, instinct taking hold and forcing him to get to his feet. His opponent is probably already waiting for him. Keith's hands tighten around the weapon they've given him, his vision adjusting as he drags himself upright, his eyes automatically searching-

And Keith freezes.

Despite everything, the roar of the crowd seems to fall away to nothing, the moment his eyes lock onto the other person in the ring. These last few quintents have been full of surprises, but now. Now, Keith’s breath truly leaves his lungs.

His opponent is taller and broader than Keith. But he’s not Galra-big. His skin is light brown and his features are shaped and proportioned like Keith’s. Nose in the centre of his face. Red-brown lips, parted slightly as he gazes back at Keith. Small, rounded ears, and a crop of black hair with a streak of white in the centre. There are no Galran markings upon his cheeks. No markings of any kind; his skin is bare like Keith’s, except for a crude scar cutting across his nose. And his eyes are not Galran eyes either. They’re brownish-grey, not purple like Keith’s. But their colour is in the irises – like Keith’s, and like nobody else’s that Keith has ever met. The only difference is his arm. It looks like it’s made of metal, different to the rest of him.

All his life, Keith has drawn stares and comments about his appearance, from Galra and non-Galra alike. He has never come face to face with someone who looks like he could actually be the same species as him before.

Until now.

Then, the rhythm of the crowd’s chant begins to filter through his shock. Keith realises that they are yelling the same word, over and over again.

_Champion._

Oh. Something flares within Keith, the same red-hot mixture of rage and indignation that has fuelled him all his life. It banishes the disarming instinct to drop his weapon, because this person is _like him_. The opponent – no matter what species he might be – is _not_ like Keith. Keith remembers what the Galra medic said, when she was examining him; he can hear it in the chant of the crowd. This creature is the champion of the Galra. Their weapon; their favourite; the toy they use to kill innocents. Maybe Keith was helpless back on the planet. Maybe, now, he will never be part of the big fight to take down the Galra, like he dreamed. But he can do this. He can eradicate this one piece of the Empire.

Keith’s fingers tighten on his weapon. Glancing down, he sees for the first time what the guard has given him. An old crowbar, rusty and heavy and blunt. He wishes he had chosen a sword instead of mouthing off, but that can’t be helped now. Keith is a Blade. This will be enough for him to take the _Champion_ apart.

His opponent still hasn’t made a move. He is only staring at Keith, his eyes wide. Keith doesn’t know what tactic he’s playing and he doesn’t care. He knows what he has to do. Keith raises his weapon and launches forward with the intention to kill.


	2. The Opponents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... don't really have an excuse for not updating this fic for nine whole months. Except, I swore I would only write it when I was genuinely feeling into it. But many, many thanks to the very sweet people who left comments. You persuaded me to open up the ol' Word doc again. Love you all

The boy comes at him faster than Shiro expected. He has to duck back quickly as his opponent lunges in a flash of metal and skin. But the lurch is off-balance. It does more harm to him than it does to Shiro, sending him skidding to the side. It takes him a moment to scramble back to his feet and face Shiro again, and when they come face to face, their eyes meet.

Shiro feels as if the breath has been punched out of his chest.

A human. The Galra have sent a _human_ to fight him. It’s difficult to tell, but he’s definitely young, maybe a few years younger than Shiro. Maybe even a teenager. Somehow, the Galra have gotten their hands on him. Shiro struggles to process what that might mean. Have they attacked another human space expedition, taken another crew, like they took his? Have they… have they launched an attack on Earth? No, no— that thought is too awful. Shiro can’t begin to think about that possibility. Not if he wants to maintain a hold on the slippery sort of sanity he has found, in this place.

There is such _hatred_ reflected back at him, in the boy's dark eyes. Shiro wonders about that, as well.

As soon as the boy is back on his feet, he’s raising his weapon once again. He’s wielding a blunt, heavy-looking piece of metal. Maybe not the deadliest weapon Shiro has faced in this arena, but certainly not something he wants colliding with his skull. Once again, the lunge is off-kilter, and Shiro easily dodges. This time, however, the boy doesn’t lose his balance. He stays on his feet, and then they’re circling each other, eyes locked.

The crowd is clearly enjoying it. There is a huge swell every time the boy lunges, and Shiro evades. And he keeps evading, and evading and evading, staying on the defensive. It’s his default position. It’s how he wins. He’s fallen into a pattern, a rhythm, in this arena. Shiro isn’t a small guy, by human standards, but compared to some of the creatures he’s been pitted against, he’s painfully outsized. He can’t strike first. He has to draw his opponent in, tire them out. And then, when he finally hits back, he hits _hard_. A few, decisive blows, to finish the fight.

But this one – this one is different.

For once, Shiro has the physical advantage. And not just in terms of size. The longer the fight goes on, the more Shiro realises it. The boy is… not in a good state. He’s out of breath already, and despite the fierce anger radiating off him, he can’t quite hide the unsteadiness in his step. Shiro isn’t in his best shape, either; he’s been living on rations (and strange, alien rations that sometimes make him sick) for what must be months now. But he’s had time to adjust. He knows how this game works, by now. And he’s had days of rest before this fight.

But this kid. This kid is quite obviously fresh off the containment ship, and it shows.

He’s struggling.

And now, hatred begins to spread through Shiro, as well. Not towards the kid. Towards the Galra. If he was fighting any opponent other than Shiro, the boy wouldn’t stand a chance. He would already be dead. It’s unfair. Everything about the pit if unfair, but this is _so_ unfair that Shiro hates them more than he ever has before. He hates the Galra with every fibre of his being.

The fact that Shiro isn’t fighting back doesn’t deter the boy from treating him as the enemy. At last, the boy lunges at him with such force that Shiro can’t dart aside in time, and he has to raise his metal arm in defence. They collide with a shatter of sparks, the boy yelling in exertion. It brings them close, than they have been throughout the whole fight so far, and Shiro catches a flash of the boy’s face beneath his wild hair. Pale skin, beaded with sweat and smudged with grime. The muscles of his arms are shaking with the effort of holding his own.

It only takes half the strength of his arm to shove the boy away, sending him staggering half way across the ring.

The crowd gasps, and Shiro _loathes_ them.

He has to end it.

The next time the boy lunges at him, Shiro blocks once again, and once again they’re brought face to face. The boy’s teeth are bared in frustration, but Shiro leans in an inch near, so the boy will be able to hear him beneath the noise of the spectators.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

He clearly wasn’t expecting that. The boy blinks, and Shiro feels his grip on crowbar slacken. For a split second, the anger falls away from his eyes, leaving it open and uncertain. But then, twice as quickly as it left, it’s back, and his grip on the weapon tightens once again.

Shiro doesn’t see him move, but he certainly feels the sharp burst of pain in his leg. He grunts and staggers back. For the first time, the boy has managed to genuinely take him by surprise, and he only just manages to block the follow-up blow, bringing his arm up just in time to parry the swing of the crowbar that he senses with a rush of hot air coming towards his side. He knocks the boy’s weapon away and then moves back again, moves decisively out of swinging range.

He kicked Shiro. He kicked him in the shin.

When Shiro looks back up at him, the boy is panting, out of breath. But there’s something else in his eyes now, something that wasn’t there before, now that he’s finally managed to get a land a blow. Something around the corners of his lips, and in his eyes. Shiro’s heart sinks. He’s Galra. Even if he looks human, he fights like he’s Galra to the bone. The small spark hope inside him – the hope that he might have just found an ally in this awful place – flickers, and then goes cold.

Shiro picks himself back up, and flexes his arm. He needs to finish this fight.

In the end, Shiro goes with his usual tactics. His opponent has been on the offensive the whole fight, and they’ve gotten into a rhythm. The boy swings; Shiro ducks, or blocks. There is danger in routine, and Shiro takes advantage of it. He lets it go on for another few minutes, all the while watching for his opportunity. It takes a while before it arrives. The kid has good form; he guards himself well, even when he’s on the offensive. He’s obviously been trained.

But everyone slips up eventually, and the boy is worn out. He was worn out when he got into the arena, and the longer it drags on, it drains him. Eventually, Shiro gets his opening. The boy’s lunges are becoming sloppier, and he leaves his left side more open to attack than his right. Shiro takes the chance just after he swings. Shiro blocks, and then, quick as lightning, lurches forwards and tackles. It works: he knocks the boy to the ground, and wrestles his arms together while he’s still yelping in shock.

Shiro is used to fighting creatures big and heavy, and his brain is running on autopilot. He wrenches the boy's slim wrists together with far more force than he needs, and a broken cry escapes the boy’s throat. Shiro has to force himself to ignore the guilt. The kid was fighting to kill.

The crowd is going insane. Shiro leans in close.

“Listen to me,” he whispers. “I don’t want to hurt you. I _really_ don’t want to hurt you. I haven’t seen another human since I was taken…”

The boy snarls, trying with all his strength to get his leg free to kick. But Shiro has learned his lesson about how much those kicks can hurt, and he pins each leg down with his own. Immobilised, the boy can do nothing but gaze up at him, his eyes filled with contempt.

“You’re the _Champion_ ,” he spits. He makes it sound like the worst curse Shiro's ever heard.

“I don’t want to hurt you…”

“I don’t care what you _want_.”

Shiro licks his lips. He’s not going to be able to hold the boy down forever. He needs to gain his trust, and fast.

“I’m going to let you up in a second,” he says. “And you need to stay down. Do you understand? Stay _down_. _Please_. If they think you’re unconscious, the fight will be over and they’ll take us both back to our cells. Neither of us has to get hurt.”

The boy stops writhing. For a moment, Shiro thinks he’s actually considering it. And then he manages to jerk his right hand out of Shiro’s grip, and socks him across the jaw. Shiro’s head reels back. His teeth clamp down on his tongue, and blood fills his mouth, metal and bitter. But Shiro doesn’t let up. He manages to stay in position, not letting the blow knock him off balance, keeping the boy pinned down under his weight. And he catches the boy’s flailing arm before he can hand another blow.

There’s nothing else he can do. He’s tried to reason with the kid. But he seems determined to fight. And Shiro isn’t going to let this boy kill him, human or not.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and then slams his prosthetic hand down onto the boy’s temple.

The effect is immediate. The boy lets out a breath of surprise, his eyes widening for a moment and then rolling back into his head. Shiro waits until he feels the body go slack beneath him, until he’s sure the boy isn’t faking, before finally sitting back on his heels, breathing hard, and feeling like the worst person in the universe.

The crowd explodes. _Our Champion has triumphed again._

 

 

The Galra aren’t big on ceremony. At least, not for their slaves. It’s one custom of theirs that Shiro is thankful for. They hold up his hand, they make him do a brief circle of the pit, while the cheers ring. And then they drag him away, and slap cuffs around his wrists, and prepare the pit for the next pair of fighters, and Shiro is nothing but a nameless slave once again.

He doesn’t have any wounds to patch up, this time. The medic on duty hands him a tissue for his tongue, and the sentries flank him at either sides to march him back to his cell. When Shiro lies back on his bed, he sees it again: the look on the boy’s face, just before he lost consciousness. The snarling rage that twisted his features. And that one, single, clear-featured moment, when Shiro first spoke. He put on a good act, making himself seem a wild creature, made of teeth and anger. But it was an act. Shiro saw something else beneath it. Something he will probably never see again. No gladiator ever fights the same opponent twice. The kid had spirit, that’s for sure. But he’ll still be dead by the end of the week. End of the month, at most.

Shiro stares at the ceiling of his cell. He can never work out if it’s black or grey. How much longer is he going to do this?

He springs upright when the door opens. Warning alarms are already going off in his mind, and his body tenses. This isn’t part of the routine. He isn’t due a meal yet, and he should have at least another few days until they take him away to fight again. There shouldn’t be any reason for someone entering his cell…

Two sentries, and a Galra guard. The sentries are dragging something between them. When Shiro sees what it is, his eyes widen.

“What are you doing?”

The boy is still unconscious. Shiro gets to his feet, but the Galra guard meets his eyes gives him a warning glare, and he stops where he is.

“That one,” he barks, nodding at the other bunk in Shiro’s cell, the one that has been empty for weeks now. “And chain him up. He’s a troublemaker.”

The boy is dropped onto the bed without care. One of the sentries reaches for the heavy chain that is fused to the wall, and the thick cuff is clamped around the boy’s wrist. It looks laughably slender and pale inside the hulking ring of metal. But the chains are Galra-tech; as soon as the cuff is fastened are fastened, the metal begins to shift, as if heated in a furnace, melting to fit perfectly around the boy’s arm.

“Same species, right?”

Shiro realises the guard is talking to him, and blinks at him. “I don’t… I’m not…”

“Make sure he doesn’t die.”

And before Shiro can begin to comprehend what that means, the guard spins on his heel and marches out of the cell, the sentries following.

Shiro stares the boy. His opponent… and his new cellmate, apparently. He’s a tangle of limbs, splayed out on the hard bunk. His long hair falls across his face, shielding it from Shiro’s view. But even so, unconscious like this, he looks… different. Vulnerable.

 _Make sure he doesn’t die._ Shiro is the only other human on board. If this boy _is_ human, after all. The Galra don’t know enough about humans – how they work, how to keep them alive – so they’ve thrown him to Shiro. Shiro isn’t any kind of doctor. He wasn’t even his crew’s medic; that was Matt. Sure, he had the standard Garrison training, but that feels like many lifetimes ago, and it was _literal_ light years away.

But… he’s all the boy has. And even though Shiro’s interests are generally the opposite of his Galra oversees’, on this occasion, they’re aligned. He doesn’t want the boy to die either. He tries to be as careful as possible as he manoeuvres the boy onto his back on the bunk, and brushes his hair out of his eyes. His face is so very different when it’s smooth, clean of emotion, his eyes closed. Shiro’s eyes are drawn to his left temple, where the skin is already darkening into a bruise that disappears into his hairline. Internally, Shiro winces. He tries to recall the movements of the fight, the blows that fell. He checks the boy’s head for injuries, prodding gently around his scalp. His fingers don’t come back stained with red, and he doesn’t _feel_ anything strange or unusual, so he supposes that’s a plus.

Eventually, when he’s done all he can think of, Shiro steps back and sits back down on his own bunk. All that’s left to do now is wait for the boy to wake up.

 

 

Shiro doesn’t have any way of telling the time in here, but he can still feel the drag of it. He would guess that two or three hours pass before his cellmate wakes up.

He doesn’t stir gently. He jolts, jerking upright.

Shiro sits up.

The boy’s eyes are wide and panicked. They move quickly scanning the cell, trying to take everything in, until finally they meet Shiro’s. _Fear._ The boy scrambles away from him, as far as the chain will let him. When he sees the cuff on his wrist, linking him to the wall, there’s a distressed noise from his throat, and Shiro can do nothing but watch as the boy yanks at it, his movements growing increasingly agitated.

Eventually, he settles for scrunching into the very corner of the bunk. He isn’t wearing fighter clothes anymore; they’ve put him in the same dark, shapeless garbs that they give to all the prisoners, and the boy is positively drowning in them.

“Are you okay?” Shiro asks.

The boy blinks. Then, Shiro sees a little of the fierceness he saw in the arena return to his eyes.

“Try anything, and I’ll cut your eyes out of your head,” he snarls, although he must be aware of the situation. He is chained up, and Shiro is not. Shiro has already beaten him once before, and that was when the boy had a weapon.

“I told you before. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Shiro sighs. Suddenly, he is tired. The exhaustion of the day – physical and emotional – has crept up on him. For a brief moment, he thought he might have found an ally. But no: he’s only found someone who seems to hate him. And now he’s trapped in a cell with him. Shiro knows he shouldn’t think like that. It’s probably not the boy’s fault. Shiro doesn’t know what he’s been through, but he’s seen what the Galra do to people; he’s been through it himself. He can’t blame the kid for being angry and defensive and untrusting. He’s probably suffered deep trauma.

But Shiro is still tired.

“Why am I in a cell with you?” the boy asks.

Shiro shrugs. “You were injured. We look similar, so the medics must have thought I’d be the best person to keep watch over you. To make sure you didn’t die from your injuries.”

The boy stares.

“Are you… okay?” Shiro asks again. “Are you... in any pain?”

The boy stares some more. He looks at Shiro like he’s speaking a language he’s never heard, even though the Galra translator devices (surgically implanted into his neck) are working just fine. Shiro is sick of that stare - being stared at like he's an  _alien_. It feels even worse than usual coming from someone who looks human.

“Okay,” says Shiro, and then he pauses. “I’m Shiro, by the way. I’m a human. I’m from Earth. I don’t know where you’re from, but I thought, from the way you looked, maybe..." He looks at the boy searchingly. The boy looks him up and down. His head tilts a little. But his gaze is still full of suspicion, and he does not reply. "... Never mind."

 _Why did you ever let yourself hope for anything else?_ Shiro sighs again, and gives up. He lies back down on his bunk, and turns away from his cellmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone else miss Voltron? Does anyone else still think about the iconic piece of animation that was 'The Black Paladins' (2018)? Pls comment so I know I'm not shouting into the void xxx


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